Book picks similar to
Startup Evolution Curve From Idea to Profitable and Scalable Business: Startup Marketing Manual by Donatas Jonikas
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entrepreneurship
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Anything You Want
Derek Sivers - 2011
In Anything You Want, Sivers details his journey and the lessons learned along the way of creating CD Baby and building a business close to his heart. “[Sivers is] one of the last music-business folk heroes,” says Esquire magazine. His less-scripted approach to business is refreshing and will educate readers to feel empowered to follow their own dreams. Aspiring entrepreneurs and others trying to make their own way will be particularly comforted by Sivers straight talk and transparency -a reminder that anything you want is within your reach. Anything You Want is also available in a 5 pack, 52 pack and very limited edition Collectible, signed by Derek.
The Ten Faces of Innovation: IDEO's Strategies for Defeating the Devil's Advocate and Driving Creativity Throughout Your Organization
Tom Kelley - 2005
The role of the devil's advocate is nearly universal in business today. It allows individuals to step outside themselves and raise questions and concerns that effectively kill new projects and ideas, while claiming no personal responsibility. Nothing is more potent in stifling innovation. Drawing on nearly 20 years of experience managing IDEO, Kelley identifies ten roles people can play in an organization to foster innovation and new ideas while offering an effective counter to naysayers. Among these approaches are the Anthropologist—the person who goes into the field to see how customers use and respond to products, to come up with new innovations; the Cross-pollinator who mixes and matches ideas, people, and technology to create new ideas that can drive growth; and the Hurdler, who instantly looks for ways to overcome the limits and challenges to any situation. Filled with engaging stories of how companies like Kraft, Procter and Gamble, Cargill and Samsung have incorporated IDEO's thinking to transform the customer experience, THE TEN FACES OF INNOVATION is an extraordinary guide to nurturing and sustaining a culture of continuous innovation and renewal.
Continuous Discovery Habits: Discover Products that Create Customer Value and Business Value
Teresa Torres - 2021
The Infinite Game
Simon Sinek - 2019
The winners and losers are easily identified.In infinite games, like business or politics or life itself, the players come and go, the rules are changeable, and there is no defined endpoint. There are no winners or losers in an infinite game; there is only ahead and behind.The more I started to understand the difference between finite and infinite games, the more I began to see infinite games all around us. I started to see that many of the struggles that organizations face exist simply because their leaders were playing with a finite mindset in an infinite game. These organizations tend to lag behind in innovation, discretionary effort, morale and ultimately performance.The leaders who embrace an infinite mindset, in stark contrast, build stronger, more innovative, more inspiring organizations. Their people trust each other and their leaders. They have the resilience to thrive in an ever-changing world, while their competitors fall by the wayside. Ultimately, they are the ones who lead the rest of us into the future.Any worthwhile undertaking starts with Why - the purpose, cause or belief that inspires us to do what we do and inspires others to join us. Good leaders know how to build Circles of Safety that promote trust and cooperation throughout their organizations. But that's not enough to help us chart a course through the unpredictable, often chaotic landscape of today's marketplace.I now believe that the ability to adopt an infinite mindset is a prerequisite for any leader who aspires to leave their organization in better shape than they found it.
Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble
Dan Lyons - 2016
His job no longer existed. "I think they just want to hire younger people," his boss at Newsweek told him. Fifty years old and with a wife and two young kids, Dan was, in a word, screwed. Then an idea hit. Dan had long reported on Silicon Valley and the tech explosion. Why not join it? HubSpot, a Boston start-up, was flush with $100 million in venture capital. They offered Dan a pile of stock options for the vague role of "marketing fellow." What could go wrong? HubSpotters were true believers: They were making the world a better place ... by selling email spam. The office vibe was frat house meets cult compound: The party began at four thirty on Friday and lasted well into the night; "shower pods" became hook-up dens; a push-up club met at noon in the lobby, while nearby, in the "content factory," Nerf gun fights raged. Groups went on "walking meetings," and Dan's absentee boss sent cryptic emails about employees who had "graduated" (read: been fired). In the middle of all this was Dan, exactly twice the age of the average HubSpot employee, and literally old enough to be the father of most of his co-workers, sitting at his desk on his bouncy-ball "chair."Mixed in with Lyons's uproarious tale of his rise and fall at Hubspot is a trenchant analysis of the start-up world, a de facto conspiracy between those who start companies and those who fund them, a world where bad ideas are rewarded with hefty investments, where companies blow money lavishing perks on their post-collegiate workforces, and where everybody is trying to hang on just long enough to reach an IPO and cash out. With a cast of characters that includes devilish angel investors, fad-chasing venture capitalists, entrepreneurs and "wantrapreneurs," bloggers and brogrammers, social climbers and sociopaths, Disrupted is a gripping and definitive account of life in the (second) tech bubble.
Aligning Strategy and Sales: The Choices, Systems, and Behaviors that Drive Effective Selling
Frank V. Cespedes - 2014
Addressing that gap, actionably and with attention to relevant research, is the focus of this book.In Aligning Strategy and Sales, Harvard Business School professor Frank Cespedes equips you to link your go-to-market initiatives with strategic goals. Cespedes offers a road map to articulate strategy in ways that people in the field can understand and that will fuel the behaviors required for profitable growth. Without that alignment, leaders will press for better execution when they need a better strategy, or change strategic direction with great cost and turmoil when they should focus on the basics of sales execution.With thoughtful, clear, and engaging examples, Aligning Strategy and Sales provides a framework for diagnosing and managing the core levers available for effective selling in any organization. It will give you the know-how and tools to move from ideas to action and build a sales effort linked to your firm’s unique goals, not a generic selling formula.Cespedes shows how sales efforts affect all elements of value creation in a business, whether you’re a start-up seeking to scale or an established firm looking to jump-start new growth. The book provides key insights to optimize your firm’s customer management activities and so improve selling and strategy.
The Decision Book: Fifty Models for Strategic Thinking
Mikael Krogerus - 2011
The Sales Bible: The Ultimate Sales Resource
Jeffrey Gitomer - 1994
Now completely revised, this book is available for the first time in paperback. The Sales Bible has helped tens of thousands of salespeople all over the world reach their potential and close the big deal. Gitomer gives sales professionals the right answers to the toughest questions:How to make sales in any economic environment Twenty-five ways to get that most-elusive appointment Top-down selling How to fill the sales pipeline with prospects ready to buy How to use the right questions to make more sales in half the time This book is everything its title claims to be
Like a Virgin: Secrets They Won't Teach You at Business School
Richard Branson - 2012
From his top tips on succeeding in business to some hard-hitting opinions on the global finance crisis, this book brings together his best advice on all things business.It's business school, the Branson way.
Tribal Leadership: Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization
Dave Logan - 2008
I learned about myself and learned lessons I will carry with me and reflect on for the rest of my life.”—John W. Fanning, Founding Chairman and CEO napster Inc.“An unusually nuanced view of high-performance cultures.” —Inc.Within each corporation are anywhere from a few to hundreds of separate tribes. In Tribal Leadership, Dave Logan, John King, and Halee Fischer-Wright demonstrate how these tribes develop—and show you how to assess them and lead them to maximize productivity and growth. A business management book like no other, Tribal Leadership is an essential tool to help managers and business leaders take better control of their organizations by utilizing the unique characteristics of the tribes that exist within.
Startup Playbook
Sam Altman
Though one-on-one advice will always be crucial, we thought it might help us scale Y Combinator if we could distill the most generalizable parts of this advice into a sort of playbook we could give YC and YC Fellowship companies.Then we thought we should just give it to everyone.This is meant for people new to the world of startups. Most of this will not be new to people who have read a lot of what YC partners have written--the goal is to get it into one place.There may be a part II on how to scale a startup later—this mostly covers how to start one.
Start Small, Stay Small: A Developer's Guide to Launching a Startup
Rob Walling - 2010
If you're a desktop, mobile or web developer, this book is your blueprint to getting your startup off the ground with no outside investment.This book intentionally avoids topics restricted to venture-backed startups such as: honing your investment pitch, securing funding, and figuring out how to use the piles of cash investors keep placing in your lap.This book assumes:* You don't have $6M of investor funds sitting in your bank account* You're not going to relocate to the handful of startup hubs in the world* You're not going to work 70 hour weeks for low pay with the hope of someday making millions from stock optionsThere's nothing wrong with pursuing venture funding and attempting to grow fast like Amazon, Google, Twitter, and Facebook. It just so happened that most people are not in a place to do this.
Profit Hacking: The Web Entrepreneur's 3 Part Formula For Maximizing Success
Steven Daar - 2014
In fact, almost every entrepreneur & business owner at some point or another has fallen into the trap of investing themselves into a complete WOMBAT (Waste Of Money, Brains, And Time). The majority of the time when a well-intentioned entrepreneur falls into a WOMBAT, it happens when they lose sight of the Profit Hacking Formula. The 3 parts of the formula are the only things you can focus on improving that will increase your profits. There are sections in Profit Hacking dedicated to showing you exactly how to ‘hack’ and subsequently scale each of those 3 Pillars. You will also discover the leverage points “hidden” in your business (the places where just a little bit of effort and improvement yield massive gains) & the fastest way to double your monthly profits. Whether you’re a seasoned business owner, a brand new entrepreneur, or work in digital marketing, Profit Hacking will help you grow the bottom line. In this no-fluff, highly-actionable book, Steve Daar shows how you can turn your business into a machine that attracts prospects & leads like a magnet, effectively converts them into buyers, and convinces them to become lifelong customers + advocates for your company. Pulling from years as an entrepreneur, investing thousands of hours & tens of thousands of dollars into self-directed marketing education, and managing over $1,300,000 in online advertising spend for Fortune 500-level businesses, he reveals to the reader how to reach the full profit potential of their business. Through this book, you will learn: • The ‘Secret’ To Significant Traffic Increases…and it almost certainly isn’t what you’re thinking • Tips for Massive Scale & Growth in your business • The Undeniable Formula for hacking your profits Profit Hacking shows you PRECISELY how to maximize every marketing activity you do from this day forward. How to maximize the value of each visitor, prospect, lead, customer, and client your business attracts (and how to get more of them). Banish the WOMBATs. Stop wasting your time, money, and effort on ineffective tactics & strategies. Learn how to grow your business faster & more effectively than ever before through the Profit Hacking principles.
Start It Up: Why Running Your Own Business is Easier Than You Think
Luke Johnson - 2011
Running your own business is nowhere near as tough as you might think. So what are you waiting for? Luke Johnson is Britain's busiest tycoon, with a personal fortune estimated at £120 million. From Pizza Express and Channel 4 to his incisive Financial Times column, Johnson has spent two decades on the business frontline. In Start It Up, Johnson sets out to inspire - and guide - every budding entrepreneur. He tackles the issues that really matter: finding the right idea, sourcing funds, and getting the best from the people you meet on the way - chiefly yourself. 'A must-read for inspiring entrepreneurs, probably the best book available on the subject' John McLaren, Management Today 'Part rant, part outpouring of useful knowledge gleaned from 20 very successful years in business. There is a great deal here that is good' Richard Reed, co-founder of Innocent Drinks, Financial Times 'For the budding entrepreneur, this clear, thoughtful and passionate how-to guide will be an excellent first investment' Economist Luke Johnson is one of Britain's most successful entrepreneurs with an estimated personal fortune of £120 million. He is Chairman of Risk Capital Partners and The Royal Society of Arts, and a former Chairman of Channel 4 Television. He writes columns for the Financial Times and Management Today. In the 1990s he was Chairman of PizzaExpress, which he grew from 12 restaurants to over 250; he also founded the Strada pizzeria chain and owns Giraffe and Patisserie Valerie. He lives in London and is married with three children.
The Founder’s Mentality: How to Overcome the Predictable Crises of Growth
Chris Zook - 2016
But when Bain & Company’s Chris Zook and James Allen, authors of the bestselling Profit from the Core, researched this question, they found that when companies fail to achieve their growth targets, 90 percent of the time the root causes are internal, not external—increasing distance from the front lines, loss of accountability, proliferating processes and bureaucracy, to name only a few. What’s more, companies experience a set of predictable internal crises, at predictable stages, as they grow. Even for healthy companies, these crises, if not managed properly, stifle the ability to grow further—and can actively lead to decline.The key insight from Zook and Allen’s research is that managing these choke points requires a “founder’s mentality”—behaviors typically embodied by a bold, ambitious founder—to restore speed, focus, and connection to customers:• An insurgent’s clear mission and purpose• An unambiguous owner mindset• A relentless obsession with the front lineBased on the authors’ decade-long study of companies in more than forty countries, The Founder’s Mentality demonstrates the strong relationship between these three traits in companies of all kinds—not just start-ups—and their ability to sustain performance. Through rich analysis and inspiring examples, this book shows how any leader—not only a founder—can instill and leverage a founder’s mentality throughout their organization and find lasting, profitable growth.